Attachment E Appendix D Equity Lens and Tools Excerpt from ODE Integrated Guidance 2025 - 27.pdf

Appendix D: Equity Lens and Tools Equity Practices as Continuous Practices Using an equity lens in conjunction with targeted universalism will recognize that identified focal groups may have differing needs that require specific and targeted supports in order to reach an overarching goal.

Equity tools are best utilized in continuous cycles that include:

1. An equity stance: Core values, commitments, orientations, principles, strategies, and frameworks that your district, organization, school, or team has decided are foundational to what you wish to prioritize in decision-making.

2. An equity lens: An active tool that supports core values, commitments, orientations, and questions to become operationalizable. An equity lens must support navigating choices in the here and now.

It helps translate theory into practice, focuses on assets rather than deficits, and avoids making decisions that could marginalize or harm students, staff, families, and communities. An equity lens could also include:

a. Facilitation Tools or Protocols: Possible protocols (such as a consultancy protocol) to use the equity lens in a facilitated space or discussion.

b. Decision-making Tools or Protocols: Possible tools (such as the ODE decision tools or consensus tools like Fist to Five) that help guide decision-making based on the questions and framework in the equity lens.

3. Implementation: An equity lens should also guide decisions around the roll-out and operationalization of key equity strategies and activities, and can be used throughout the entire process of implementation.

4. Processes for reflection, feedback, and learning:

Throughout the entire cycle and process, teams should consider how reflection, feedback, and learning time and processes are built in to refine the equity stance, lens, and other tools.

Taken together, this cycle and these steps could look like:

Stance

Lens

Decision-making

Equity Cycle

Reflection, Feedback, O tcomes

Movement, Operating, Implementing

The Oregon Equity Lens The purpose of the Oregon Equity Lens157 is to clearly articulate the shared goals we have for our state and the intentional investments we will make to reach our goal of an equitable educational system. This equity lens helps educators and decision-makers recognize institutional and systemic barriers and discriminatory practices that have limited student success in the Oregon education system.

The focus of this equity lens is on race and ethnicity. This is rooted in an understanding of the historical context of Oregon and the knowledge that when we focus on racial disparities as a lens to consider investments for

157 The Oregon equity lens clearly articulates the shared goals we have in Oregon for an equitable education system. We encourage applicants to build on this lens using their own needs/goals and the checklist provided in this guidance.

Oregon Department of Education - Aligning for Student Success: Integrated Guidance 2025-27 111

RFA S-58100-000XXXXX - ODE CTE REVIT 25-27 Att. E - APPENDIX D: EQUITY LENS AND TOOLS

(EXCERPT FROM ODE INTEGRATED GUIDANCE 2025–27)

https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/equity/equityinitiatives/pages/default.aspx each and every student and community, we can and will generate opportunity and improvement in every area of educational practice and performance. Centering racial equity is the path through which we can heal while targeting areas of action, intervention and investment.

The passage of the Student Success Act directly calls upon educators and leaders across the state to act together, with a shared sense of purpose and possibility.

Deepening Your Equity Lens While the Oregon Equity Lens offers a powerful starting point, we also encourage applicants to consider their unique equity needs, values, and experiences that they wish to center158. To support the development of an equity lens that reflects your district, community, or team’s equity stance and needs, we have created a checklist of what an equity lens should address and considerations you may wish to have when developing a lens:

What is your equity stance:

▪ Can you see throughlines to your equity lens? For example, if your stance is intended to dismantle structural and systemic racism, how does your lens target deeper levers as well?

▪ How does it include district wide equity policies, statements, strategic plans?

▪ Which communities’ values and priorities are represented in the equity stance? Which ones might be missing?

What team will be using this equity lens:

▪ Is the team less experienced with equity and therefore requiring a more prescriptive lens? Or is the team more experienced allowing for the lens to be more adaptive and flexible?

▪ What make-up (of staff position, demographic, etc.)

does the team need to be for the equity lens to be used appropriately?

How does your equity lens address the following:

▪ Particular regional stories, community make-up, intersectional dynamics, and historic and systemic oppression

▪ The kinds of identities and demographics that experience marginalization state-wide and in your

158 For an example of a customized equity lens, see Lane ESD’s Equity Lens community, including race, ethnicity, class, gender, and/or sexual orientation, disability/ability, religion, etc.

▪ Student, family, community and staff assets and strengths

▪ Current and historical trauma, and the impacts of microaggressions, exclusion, and other forms of psychological harm (using a strengths-based, trauma-informed approach)

▪ Particular problems, dilemmas, tensions or complexities in your context, including:

▪ Levels of access to quality education resources across focal groups and various identities

▪ Dimensions of power: in decision-making, who is on the team, etc.

▪ System health, including levels of collaboration and trust

▪ Community involvement: who is involved in knowledge gathering, sense making, and decision making

What other tools, structures or processes do you need to include, such as:

▪ Facilitation protocols to structure discussion (like the SRI Protocols)

▪ Decision-making protocols to clarify roles and process (like the Fist to Five Voting & Consensus model)

▪ Structures, timelines or tools for continuous improvement, reflection, and learning

Additional Resources

▪ ODE Decision Tools

▪ Racial Equity Impact Assessment

▪ SRI Protocols

▪ Fist to Five Voting & Consensus Decision Making

Appendix D: Equity Lens and Tools 112 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ji5oYgqbtgD2aiKjA02FwcXI4QfqkMPr/view https://www.schoolreforminitiative.org/protocols/ https://www.ncfp.org/knowledge/fist-to-five-voting-and-consensus/ https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/healthsafety/Documents/Decision%20Tools%20for%20SY%202020-21.pdf https://www.raceforward.org/sites/default/files/RacialJusticeImpactAssessment_v5.pdf https://www.schoolreforminitiative.org/protocols/ https://www.ncfp.org/knowledge/fist-to-five-voting-and-consensus/